Baltimore Evening Sun (12 November 1912): 6.

The jackasses at the City Council are looking forward with high expectations to the next message of the Hon. the Archangel Harry. The last time he devoted 60 per cent. of his space to the horrendous Sunpaper ane 40 per cent. to public business. Next time, so I hear, he will leave out public business altogether. Lay on, Tartuffe!—Adv.

PRIZES FOR PLATITUDES.

A valuable prize each week for the best platitude loosed in Baltimore! Come one, come all! A special welcome to Prominent Baltimoreans, leading lawyers, members of the judiciary and ministers of the gospel. No entrance fee! No vexing conditions! No man barred because he is poor!

This week’s prize is a gallon jug of witch hazel, vanilla flavor, from the famous goose grease laboratories of Hot Towel. Next week: An Edam cheese.

My great and good friend, the Hon. William H. Anderson. favors me in today’s Letter Column with a canto of virtuous reviling, and incidentally sets off a brilliant rocket of dry statistics. Among other things he shows that but 20,000,000 gallons of hard liquor are shipped into the dry States each year for the use and enjoyment of 15,000,000 persons. Even so. But these are the official figures, as reported by the Interstate Commerce Commission, and what the Interstate Commerce Commission doesn’t know, in its official capacity, is a plenty. The truth is, of course, that for every gallon of corn juice which enters a dry State frankly as corn juice, and is counted as such by the statisticians, probably 20 gallons go in as piece goods, linoleum, crockery and agricultural machinery. And probably 10 or 20 more gallons go in as near-beer, “malt” whiskey, “ambrosia,” “nerve tonic” and “nonalcoholic” grape juice.

I don’t know what the figures are for Georgia, but no doubt they show annual receipts of no more than 2,500,000 gallons of stimulant. And yet, as every sane man knows, the city of Savannah is wide open, and its bars probably sell four times that much every year, for they supply not only Savannah but also a vast and alkaline hinterland, with swarms of bibbing muzhiks upon its wide steppes. So in every other dry State. As the Hon. Mr. Anderson himself says, the centre of supply is often just across the border. Thus Kansas City, Mo., keeps Kansas City, Kan., in a condition of endless dampness and pours saving streams of synthetic rye into 50 Kansas counties.

This, in fact, is the chief objection to local option. If it actually obliterated Rum few sane men would complain, for Rum, like medicated lingerie, probably does as much harm as good. But all local option accomplishes is to subtititute the surreptitious guzzling of bad liquor for the open drinking of good liquor, and so it does double harm, first by making drinking romantic, and secondly by making it dangerous to life and limb. Such is virtue, the handmaiden of vice. The world would be a great deal better off, I believe, if it were less virtuous and more honest, less pious and more decent.

As for the proposed law prohibiting shipments of inflammatory juices into dry States, it is a piece of solemn piffle, and the Hon. Mr. Anderson must know it. Does he want the national Government to establish military cordons around the dry States, with customs houses at all border railroad stations? If it ever does this, contraband liquor will have to go by moonlight; if it doesn’t, th. present heavy shipments of “agricultural machinery” will continue. In either event, the only thing accomplished will be an increase in the cost of Rum and a further falling off in its quality. That is why the distillers are against the law. They know that it will cost them something to break it. But they also know that the breaking of it will not seriously strain their ingenuity.

Meanwhile, the Hon. Satan Anderson has taken a week off to laugh the thought of Wet Hope Chafin out of his system.--Adv.

Col. Jacobus Hook’s personal return under the Corrupt Practices Act:

*in all, 516h., 38m., Eastern Standard Time.

The sub-committee appointed by the committee on South American trade has now appointed a sub-sub-committee, and the sub-sub-committee will shortly appoint a sub-sub-sub-committee to arrange a banquet at which sub-sub-sub-sub-committees will be appointed to appoint sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-committees. Meanwhile the estimable Sunpaper will print another series of portraits of “live wires” and the band behind the celluloid behind the celluloid palms will play the Liebestod from “Rienzi.”

The heroes of Black Tuesday: the Archangel Harry and Wet Hope Chafin.

Some of the Old Town Merchants, drunk with treason, have now gone so far that they refuse to smoke the Hon. Jacobus Hook’s cigarros.--Adv.

The Hon. Dan Loden ain’t saying nothing, but now and then he gives a little chuckle, so to speak.--Adv.

Boil your drinking water! Grab the fly while he is groggy! Send a wreath to Wet Hope Chafin!

The soughing and complaining of the platitudinarians:

The thing for public servants to do is to enforce the law.–The Maryland Suffrage News. Cities can be cleaned and kept clean by men and women.--The Rev. Dr. Stephen S. Wise. People do sometimes change their opinions.--The Hon. Dr. Thomas H. Lewis.

The super-Mahon: a hero with a thousand flatterers and no friends.

The best fiction so far published this winter:

“’Twixt Sea and Land Tales,” by Joseph Conrad. (Dent).

And on the very day that Harry carried the bridge loan the circulation of the accursed Evening Sunpaper touched the 40,000 mark. Let the band play the danse macabre from the ballet of “The Job Hounds.”

Say what you will ag’in Harry, you gotta admit he’s the best friend the newspapers ever had. ’Taint hardly a day passes without he bawls ’em out, and ’taint never he bawls ’em out without he advertises ’em.–Adv.